Project Sharky

We are often faced with cars that are sent into us for specific work, and as we start working on the car we a faced with a litany of other issues.

Such is the case in point with a 1985 BMW e24 635csi. This is one of my personal favourite cars and over the years I have been involved in a number of doomed projects. The last one was eventually scrapped as the body was so badly accident damaged that it was economically unviable to repair.

When this particular vehicle came in through our workshop we expressed our concern with the amount of unresolved issues with the vehicle. The vehicle was accident damaged and the front and rear bumpers were misaligned. The body was far from straight and the spray job (a horrific flip paint job) was amateurish at best. The client was adamant that the parts in the car were in “pristine” original condition, but on inspection this was really a thin veneer of adequate over a core of absolute rot. The best example of this was the speaker pods on the rear parcel shelf. The parcels shelf had been hacked apart by someone and then left to rot. The pods themselves had been exposed to wet and then left to warp horridly and irreparably. These parts are no longer in stock with BMW so in order to provide a workable base for the parcel shelf we eventually cast a fibreglass parcel shelf, stripped the pods to their rusted steel frame, treated and repaired the frames and finally covered this all with high grade acoustic carpet. It seems that since this was done there is now a nice grease mark on the panel

Now this is just one example of hundreds of little (but significant) issues with the car. The client seemed to have little interest in fixing the car properly and after a extended period of time the car was offered to me to purchase.

Now knowing what I did about the car I was relatively hesitant to take on the project, but as this write-up clearly highlights that I did in fact jump in and purchase the vehicle. This was done for all the wrong reasons and frankly is going to bite me in the arse at some point.

We set about stripping the car to get a better understanding of the structural issues we were going to face and were very pleased to find that the actually body and forward structs are straight. The suspension was in atrocious condition, the motor was leaking in more places than we could count and the accident damage was limited to the bumper brackets being smacked on both sides of the vehicle.

Someone in the past had found the magic of Sikaflex and everywhere we looked we found trim pieces held on with Sikaflex and not panel clips.


The rear spoiler was affixed without the factory hard points and with a small mountain of sika and silicon. The resultant gaps had already started to cause corrosion.


From an interior perspective it seems that a monkey got hold of some spare wire and started running random jumps. The carpet is completely rotted away, the dash is was not installed correctly and pretty much every part of the interior had been attacked with by a buffoon with limited skill beside pulling and breaking out trim panels.

So where to from here?
I have bought an s38b36 motor for her, replacing the very poor condition M30. Every suspension component has been stripped, all available sacrificial suspension parts have been replaced and the rest have been sent for sand blasting, paint and finally every single rubber bush and seal have been replaced.

Have also procured a set of springs and matched shocks with a 25mm drop. I have traced and purchased M-technic kit (excluding front spoiler – which I am not fond off) and we have started fabrication on a custom front bumper.

We will replace as many of the damaged trim panels as we can and fabricate what is not available while retrimming the interior dash and other parts as necessary.

We have already stripped the engine bay and given it a coat of 2K black and are now working on doing the body prep for a colour change. An the chosen colour is not period correct, but at least BMW correct – Avus Blue.

There is still a long way to go. The most frustrating part thus far has been the discovery of rust on what i was told was a rust free car...


The end game.
The idea is to end up with a M635csi’esque car that has plenty of poke, looks the part and is a real head turner with a 100% solid core and an attitude to boot. This is my personal car so it will not be period correct and will sacrifice originality for my requirements. All in all this should be a monster build.